1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information recording medium including a drive information area for recording drive information including a plurality of recording and reproduction conditions, and an information recording and reproduction method and an information recording and reproduction apparatus for the information recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
As one type of information recording medium having a sector structure, optical disks are known. Since the recording density and capacity of optical disks have recently been improved, it is important to guarantee the reliability of the optical disks. For this purpose, optical disk apparatuses perform adjusting processing for finding recording and reproduction conditions.
The recording and reproduction conditions heavily rely on the characteristics of optical disks and optical disk apparatuses. Adjusting processing for finding the recording and reproduction conditions needs to be performed after an optical disk is mounted on an optical disk apparatus in repetition, for example, each time the optical disk apparatus is started, or each time the characteristics of the optical disk or optical disk apparatus are changed by a factor such as, for example, a temperature change.
Recently, more precise recording and reproduction conditions have been demanded due to further improvement in the density and the capacity of optical disks. However, there are problems in that it requires a longer period of time for adjusting processing to obtain more precise recording and reproduction conditions, and as a result the wait time of the optical disk apparatus is extended.